commercetools Frontend Provides Sweet Success in Six Months

Christie Cookie Co., a premium cookie manufacturer and brand, set out to modernize its commerce experience to meet customers’ evolving demands in the digital world. Their objectives were to enable their business with more control over content and site operations, to enhance their mobile user experience, and to build a premium site that properly reflected the premium products they sell. Implementing commercetools Frontend and commercetools Composable Commerce accomplished these goals in a rapid, six-month kickoff-to-launch that required zero rollbacks and allowed for the flexibility to build a custom, agency-designed frontend. With its new platform, Christie Cookie Co. has a competitive edge in its market.

Christie Cookie Co. is a gourmet cookie brand and a member of the Rich Products Corp. family. Customers can find their products online and in grocery stores, restaurants, and Nashville bakeries. They are also famous for their well-known DoubleTree chocolate chip cookies found in DoubleTree Hotels. Christie Cookie describes themselves as “…making the most crave-able, gourmet cookies in America.”*

*After many “test” cookie orders, the Aries team would agree.

1. Empowerment & Flexibility
   On their legacy platform, Christie Cookie found themselves unable to have the control they needed over their content and site operations. They sought to give power to their internal teams so they could build tools and change content in an agile and rapid way. They also had unique differentiators, like a custom tin builder and multi-ship, and needed a flexible platform to better support these business-critical features.
   
2. Mobile Experience
   Christie Cookie Co. desired a robust frontend solution to deliver a seamless, engaging, and responsive user experience that allowed consumers to use their site across any device. Their old user experience was not mobile-friendly and, therefore, could not support how customers shop.
   
3. Premium Performance
   Christie Cookie’s legacy platform was outdated, and the performance was painfully slow. They wanted a premium experience that matched their premium products and needed it in time for the holiday season. They were keen to keep the project timeline short without sacrificing a fantastic site experience.

Christie Cookie Co. chose commercetools Frontend and commercetools Composable Commerce. The headless commerce architecture and React-based interface provided the flexibility needed for Christie Cookie’s custom needs while allowing them to launch a new scalable and modern commerce experience quickly. commercetools Frontend gave the Christie Cookie teams the necessary content management capabilities and, with a boost from the Aries accelerator, the ability to get their new site up and running in only six months.

Aries launched the Christie Cookie project with a site designed by a third-party creative agency and unique business capabilities such as their Custom Tin Builder and Multi-Ship tools. “We went live and stayed live,” says Tim Steele, CTO of Aries Solutions. “commercetools provided Christie Cookie with a great commerce experience that they continue to iterate on. The commercetools Frontend provides a unique and flexible approach that allows customers to use out-of-the-box components alongside their own custom components. The commercetools Composable Commerce backend allows Christie Cookie to ship to hundreds of addresses on a single order. Frontend and backend – it’s a complete solution.”

Christie Cookie decided to modernize its payment gateway with Stripe. “This made implementing payments easier and faster,” says Tim. “Stripe’s React components made the integration with commercetools Frontend simple, and Stripe is very developer friendly with well-documented APIs for our backend developers. Their solution helped with the rapid timeline.”

Using Stripe, Christie Cookie can quickly add additional modern payment methods their customers use, such as Google Pay and Apple Pay. Tim adds, “Organizations don’t always think about payment gateways during replatforms. However, having a modern, unified payment solution for traditional and digital payments helped us meet the Christie Cookie goals.”

Christie Cookie used Klaviyo to communicate with their customers on their old commerce platform. It was important to their business that Klaviyo was properly integrated into their new platform.

“Christie Cookie used Klaviyo for abandoned carts, but they also used it for other messages, like wishing their customers ‘Happy Birthday’ or reminders to order another tin of cookies. It was an important tool for them to power smarter digital relationships with their customers,” Tim explains. “Fortunately, Klaviyo’s API approach made it straightforward to integrate with commercetools, and Klaviyo has a pre-built, open-sourced integration with commercetools, making it even easier. Christie Cookie can keep sending delicious-looking emails to their customers.”

Since its launch, Christie Cookie has happily reached all three of its goals. Updating content is simplified. A marketing manager at the company recently stated how efficiently they can publish changes to the storefront, set up promos, and modify holiday and seasonal items, even in production. Additionally, they can schedule deployments of content and promotions, meaning no more weekend updates!

They have also unlocked new commerce capabilities. On their previous platform, they had a limitation on discounts for corporate customers. With commercetools Composable Commerce, the promotional capabilities removed these limitations and opened up new ways to promote cookies to individual and corporate customers.

During the holidays, the Christie Cookie team experienced the benefits of a modern platform firsthand. An issue arose with their outbound email service, and some new customers weren’t receiving sign-up verification emails. Aries and Christie Cookie quickly created a solution: a switch that site operators could use to turn off the verification emails. In only a few days, the feature was in production, all users could create new accounts, and the business had a new tool in their toolbox for operating their site.

“We turned around a quick fix that put them in the driver’s seat to help customers create a new account,” says Chris of the experience.

On their legacy platform, Christie Cookie would have needed to request these changes and wait for another company to make, deploy, and operate the switch. commercetools Frontend has put Christie Cookie’s content and site operations where they belong – in Christie Cookie’s hands.

“Previously, Christie Cookie Co. would enforce a code freeze every October. But with commercetools Frontend and commercetools Composable Commerce, we’ve shipped a release almost every single week since Go Live because they’ve been so comfortable with their new tools. They’ve been able to change their whole approach to updates,” Chris Rogers says. “We could do a code release daily if we needed to. It’s that simple.”

In just six months, Christie Cookie gained all the benefits of composable commerce, including taking control of its site operations, modernizing its commerce experience, and improving its overall performance. Christie Cookie has empowered its internal teams with a cookie jar full of new tools and capabilities, and its customers can shop on any device. They now have the premium experience their premium products deserve.

Reach out to Aries Solutions today to achieve equally sweet success with commercetools Frontend and commercetools Composable Commerce for your business!